March Toward the Thunder

by Joseph Bruchac

  Louis crawled nearer, keeping low. The half-light before dawn and the way the land folded like the crease in a palm made it simple to stay out of sight. He reached the ridge across from the Confederate gun crews that had begun firing on E Company at 5:00 a.m.

  Louis raised up, a finger’s width at a time, squinted through the binoculars Flynn had lent him for his scouting mission. He focused in on trees, the back of a horse, then an artillery wagon.

  Just as I figured. Six-pounders.

  It wasn’t that hard to find them from his vantage point. As always, the artillery had been placed on a ridge behind and above the Rebel line. The four Southern guns and their crews were silhouetted by the near-dawn sky, a lighter blue than the dark sky to the west.

  Guns had to be in plain sight for their crews to see where their shots fell and adjust their next rounds. But they were an easy target for counter-battery fire. Gun crews were often the earliest casualties. And even if the shells fired at them missed, they could still hit the nearby munitions wagons. A man with a gun crew had to just stand upright, a target for small arms fire. He had no weapon other than that big hungry gun that he kept feeding with shells and cannonballs.

  Louis watched, fascinated.

  The eight-man crew that moved around each gun seemed to be doing a dance. Deadly, but graceful, getting off four rounds in a minute. One crew member cleaned the bore with a long-handled rammer. Another handed the cartridge to the third man who inserted it into the muzzle where the first man could shove it in with the rammer. Behind the gun a fourth gunner cut and inserted the fuse as a fifth and sixth brought up more heavy cartridges. The chief of the gun crew checked the aim, raised his hand. The eighth man pulled the lanyard. A dense cloud of white smoke suddenly appeared at the muzzle as the cannon violently recoiled six feet to the rear. Half a second later, Louis heard the thunder-clap boom, close enough to make his ears ring.

  Must be ten times louder where that gun crew stands.

  Most men in the artillery were not only easy targets, they were also deafened by their work.

  I would, no way, want to be in the artillery. That work it is not just too dangerous. It is too dang noisy.

  He lowered himself down and began to crawl backward.

  “Well?” Sergeant Fynn asked.

  “Model 1841 six-pounders,” Louis said. “Four of them.”

  “I’d thought they was not Napoleons by the sound of them,” Flynn replied. “A bit too tinny.”

  In battle, the sergeant’s ears were as accurate as most men’s eyes. Better, in fact, when the smoke and dust blinded your vision.

  “If ye don’t know which way t’ go, then march toward the thunder,” Flynn would say. “Ye can do that with yer eyes closed.”

  The sergeant turned to the men lined up in the shadows of the pine woods behind him. A shower of needles and small branches fell on their shoulders as a shell went whistling through the treetops.

  “’Tis lucky we are today,” Flynn said. “All they have up there is four little peashooters. And as ye can clearly see, our dear Rebel friends are shooting high as they always do.” The sergeant chuckled. “There’s not an artillery man in the South kin hit the side of a hill. Now with the dawn coming behind ’em and the blessed dark of the west behind us, we’ll be seeing ’em better. Their sharpshooters’ll be cursing their bad luck at not being able to find a target. Now, with the Corcoran Legion by our side, who kin stop the boys of the Irish Brigade?”

  “No one at all, sir,” Devlin’s voice called out from the crowd of men whose faces were hidden by the darkness.

  “No Johnny Reb,” Kirk said.

  “Not even the divvil hisself,” Belaney affirmed.

  Their voices sound as eager as if we are being asked to take a walk through a park in spring.

  Despite all they’d been through in the past days, no matter that they had seen so many friends fall, the spirit of the 69th that day was high.

  It makes no sense.

  Yet Louis felt his own spirits raise and his heart pound in pride.

  “On the double quickstep then. When they see our green flag and realize who’s coming at them, they’ll run.”

  Two hundred yards to cross. Shots whistled overhead.

  A hundred yards. Shells began to fall among them.

  Fifty yards. Despite the poor light, sharpshooters behind their breastworks were now picking out targets. Grapeshot and rifle balls were reaping a deadly harvest.

  As he trotted forward, Louis saw men fall to either side of him. But their own rifles and the Union cannon were taking a toll on the Rebel ranks. Minié balls whistled over his head. Shells burst to either side, but he was untouched. As he neared the first entrenched position, the shots were fewer, the cannons silent. Louis leaped up, grabbed at a branch that was thrust out of the parapet, and pulled himself over.

  The rifle pit on the other side was almost empty. Only three wounded men in gray with their rifles on the ground and their hands in the air. The main body of the Rebels had abandoned the position and were retreating through the pines.

  “After them!” a man with a captain’s bars on his uniform shouted as he ran. Louis recognized him as one of the officers of the 69th. Captain Blake.

  Louis and all those of the Legion and the Brigade who could still run or hobble or limp followed Blake. Their line was ragged, but they crossed the uneven ground and picked their way through the pines.

  Another line of fortifications, larger than the first they’d just taken, rose up ahead. The Rebels had fallen back behind it. A withering fire burst forth at them. Bark flew from tree trunks, blood misted the air.

  “Re-form!” Captain Blake shouted.

  “Re-form ranks,” Sergeant Flynn repeated, his words echoed down the blue mass of men.

  Louis quickly looked around. All the faces were strange to him. The soldiers from several regiments were rallying together behind the captain and sergeant at their head, unmindful of the tempest of bullets, the shells falling like driving rain.

  A flag bearer next to Louis grabbed at his hip and fell. Louis’s left hand closed around the pole before their green flag with its Irish harp struck the soil. It was the only color on their part of the line. You needed a flag to rally the regiment.

  I’m a target now for every Rebel sharpshooter.

  Louis started to lift the flag higher.

  Captain Blake was too quick for him. “I’ll take that, soldier,” Blake said with a smile.

  Grasping the pole of the flag with both hands, Blake climbed to the highest point on the work and waved it back and forth.

  “Come on, boys, and I will show you how to fight!” he called out in a clear voice that carried like a song.

  Another sergeant, not Flynn, but a noncom from B Company, stepped forward to take the flag from the captain’s hands as Blake made his way to the front, leading them toward the mass of gray-clad soldiers gathering before the entrenchments for a counterattack.

  It seems as if the bullet’s not been made that can strike him. His bravery’s a suit of armor.

  But as Louis thought those words, Captain Blake dropped down to one knee. Or rather he fell to the place where a knee had once been. A minié ball had struck, leaving a great wound that showed splintered bone for a heartbeat before it was covered by the gush of blood. A lieutenant leaped to Blake’s side, tried to stop the bleeding with a tourniquet. A carrying party formed, but as they lifted the wounded captain onto a stretcher, one and then another of the bearers were struck down by the fire from the oncoming counterattack.

  Blake propped himself up on the stretcher to wave one arm. “Save yourselves,” he shouted, teeth gritted against the pain, face pale from loss of blood. “The enemy’s upon us!”

  As so often happens in battle, the rush of men, the sound of guns, and the clouds of smoke washed over Louis then. Time passed. Whether minutes or hours, no one could say. They drove back not just one counterattack, but too many to count. A field of fallen men lay between them and
the Confederate ranks gathered behind the next line of trees, showing no sign of another assault.

  Somehow, the sun had leaped across the sky. It was well past midday. A hand rose up in the no-man’s-land between the two armies.

  “Water,” a voice called out from among the dead and wounded.

  “I know that voice,” someone who was standing next to Louis said.

  He turned to look. It was Merry. He and Devlin, Kirk, and Belaney had all found their way to this same spot in the line where their sergeant stood, solid as an oak. Somehow, Flynn had gathered them the way a mother hen does her chicks.

  “Water,” the man called again in a voice weakened by wounds. “Will no one bring me a drink of water before I die?” The man lifted himself up on one elbow. His uniform showed him to be a Union captain.

  "Tom O’Shea,” Merry called, his voice more high and shrill than Louis had heard before. “Tom! Is it you?”

  Merry grabbed the canteen that hung by Louis’s side and pulled it free. Then, before anyone else could move or speak, Merry was over the embankment, down into the rifle pit, and then up and out of it as quickly as a young deer bounding through the forest. Rebel shots were being fired as Merry ran, but the little private paid them no mind and none struck home.

  Louis tried to follow. Devlin and Kirk held him back.

  “It’s a fine heroic thing the lad is doing,” Devlin said, not letting go of Louis’s arm, “and it’s worthy of a song. But there’s no place for you in this ballad, Chief.”

  “Tom,” Merry called. “Tom.”

  “Whose voice is that?” the injured man answered.

  Somehow, though their words were not loud, a trick of the way the land lay or the clarity of the air made the two voices carry to all ears. There was pride on the one side for the bravery the young soldier was showing and respect on the other side for that same courage. Rebel marksmen were grounding their weapons and standing up to watch.

  “Who are you?” the wounded captain said as Merry reached him. “Am I dreaming?”

  Merry dropped down on one knee, placing one hand behind the wounded captain’s shoulders and holding the canteen to his lips with the other.

  “It’s me, Tom, drink this.”

  The man drank and then jerked back. “You?” he said, his voice startled. “How can it be? In a uniform? And your hair? Where’s your beautiful long hair?”

  "Tom O’Shea.” The little private was weeping now in a most unmanly way. “I did it to be close to you. Can you forgive me?”

  "Mary,” Captain O’Shea said, his hand caressing her face. “My Mary.”

  Louis was not sure how many realized what they were seeing, but he knew.

  How is it all of us was fooled for so long?

  He looked over at Sergeant Flynn.

  “Hold your fire!” the sergeant suddenly bellowed in a voice that echoed off the hills. “That wee lad is a lass. Put up your guns.”

  Flynn was at the top of the parapet now, waving one arm in the air and pointing the other toward the stunned men in gray.

  “D’ ye not see ’tis the man’s own wife?”

  On the field before them Mary O’Shea had taken off her private’s coat and unwound the roll of cloth she’d bound around her chest to hide the curve of her bosom. She began tearing the cloth into bandages.

  By the time she’d bound her husband’s wound, a party of stretcher bearers had reached her, Louis and Flynn among them. Not a shot came from either side as men stood and watched, guns by their sides. And who among them was not thinking of the dear ones they’d left behind? For one blessed moment, all thoughts of fighting left that field.

  In the surgeon’s tent, no one seemed to be able to say a word until Surgeon O’Meagher had finished his examination of the weak but still conscious man.

  "No need for amputation of any limbs,” O’Meagher said to Captain O’Shea. "Clean flesh wounds in both arms and legs. You would have, of course, exsanguinated had you been left to lie for another hour. With proper care you’ll live a long life—though your career as a soldier is over.”

  “I’ll care for him,” Mary said.

  How could I have ever thought her anything but a woman? Louis thought. Now that he knew she was a woman, she no longer looked so young. Much older than me, probably as old as twenty-four.

  “Private Merry,” a deep Irish voice said. It was, of course, Flynn. “I’m afraid ye’ll no longer be able to be part of this man’s army. Ye’ll have to turn in yer weapon and kit and uniform, and forfeit what pay ye have comin’, I’m sorry to say. Ye were a fine soldier.”

  "Yes, sir,” Mary O’Shea said, coming to attention and snapping a salute as she did so and then breaking into a grin. “I’ll gladly give up this wool uniform, sir. But I shall miss my musket.”

  Flynn turned to Captain O’Shea, who hardly seemed to have heard the sergeant’s speech. His eyes were on his wife, a look on his face that combined love and awe.

  “Sir,” Flynn said, “I know it’s out of place for me to speak this way to a superior officer and all, but I need to say it. Ye take care of yer wife and cherish her and ne’er say a hard word for what she’s done or ye’ll be hearing from Liam Flynn.”

  "Sergeant,” Captain O’Shea said, "it’s less I’d be thinking of you had you not said that.” He weakly lifted one hand to shake Flynn’s. “You have my word as surely as my dear wife has my everlasting love.”

  Mary O’Shea grasped Louis by the elbow and pulled him over. “Tom, this is Louis. He’s a fine lad. He has been my best friend these weeks and as good a friend as any soldier could have wanted.”

  Captain O’Shea turned his eyes toward Louis. "So you watched over my Mary in battle, boy?”

  Louis nodded.

  More like she watched over me, he thought, but words weren’t coming to his lips.

  Tom O’Shea let go of Flynn’s hand and reached toward Louis to grasp the same arm that Mary held. For the first time there was a hint of a smile on the wounded captain’s face. “So, my wife’s best friend, would you do me the honor of repeating your name?”

  “Louis, Private Louis Nolette, sir.”

  “Louis? That’s a good name, isn’t it, Mary? A good name to give a son if the Lord should so bless us in the years to come?”

  “Yes, my dear Tom,” Mary said. Her face was bright with happiness, one hand on her husband’s shoulder and the other on Louis’s arm. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  IN THE RIVER

  Friday, May 20, 1864

  “So,” Flynn said, “there’s a use for cavalry after all.”

  The sergeant carefully folded the newspaper and put it down gently on the log bench.

  As if it’s a butterfly whose wings might be damaged by rough handling.

  Louis hadn’t really taken notice of it before. But, come to think of it, Flynn was always like that with anything with words on it. It didn’t matter if it was a Bible, a magazine, a newspaper, or even a leaflet. The printed word seemed to be a sacred thing to their sergeant “And what would that be?” Corporal Hayes asked, limping over to grab the newspaper from the bench.

  “Gently, Corporal,” Flynn said. “You’ll tear the dear thing. Just look there near the middle of the first page.”

  Hayes sat down as if his legs were made of wood.

  Still stiff from being clubbed by rifle butts.

  The corporal rubbed his equally bruised chin gingerly with one hand before opening the paper.

  Those Rebs who captured Hayes were none too gentle. But our corporal himself returned the favor.

  Because the corporal’s captors had neglected to have him give his word that he would not try an escape, he had waited till his captors were distracted by a shell bursting near them. The thought of being shot while trying to get away appealed to him more than being sent to Andersonville. Grabbing a gun from one man, the corporal had kicked another in the belly and slugged a third in the chin with the musket barrel. Then Hayes hightailed it through the tre
es.

  It had been near dark, but even then he might not have made it had he not been near a small rapid-flowing stream. Without hesitating, Hayes had jumped in and been carried around the bend. It had taken him two days to find his way back to what was left of E Company.

  Louis smiled at the memory of the return of their formerly lost noncom. Corporal Hayes had thought to surprise them, but had ended more surprised himself. That their numbers were so diminished was sad but not shocking. That one of their men had been a woman shook him more than his own capture and bangs and bruises.

  “The wee lad was a lass?” Hayes said in a voice that brought a grin to Sergeant Flynn’s face. “The wee lad was a lass?”

  In the day and a half the corporal had been back with them he’d repeated his bemused question innumerable times. One minute he’d be pounding a piece of hardtack with a stone to break it into pieces that his sore jaw could handle and the next he would pause and look up.

  “The wee lad was a lass?”

  Even last night, settled into his tent, other men snoring about him, his voice had broken the still of the night every two or three hours with those same six words.

  “The wee lad was a lass?”

  Louis wondered if the sergeant’s calling Hayes’s attention to the newspaper was not just a way to turn the corporal’s mind toward something else.

  Hayes’s brow furrowed as he studied the paper, leaning his head close to the page. Unlike Flynn, the corporal was a deliberate reader whose lips moved as he sounded out each word. He finished a sentence and looked up.

  “General Jeb Stuart is dead?” Hayes asked.

  “Aye,” Flynn replied. “Shot and killed dead by one of Sheridan’s men in a clash between their cavalry units. I heard word of it two days ago, but seein’ it in this copy of the Richmond Enquirer so generously given to me by one of our prisoners—ye can trust that it’s gospel truth. They are mournin’ his loss in Richmond. ’Tis the heaviest blow they’ve took since Stonewall Jackson.”

  Flynn slapped his thighs with his broad palm and stood up.

  “So, as I said, there seems to be a bit of use for cavalry after all. And that is t’ lessen the number of cavalrymen on the other side. For an enemy cavalryman is worse—though only by a hairsbreadth—than one of our own.”